[Editor's note: head over to Hobotrashcan.com to read a detailed recap of "LA X"]
The X Factor – “LA X” Analysis
by Chris Kirkman
Whew. I’ll freely admit that I was a bit worried going into this season; there was such a wide-open playing field that I wasn’t sure which path Lost might travel down. At the end of last season, we talked a bit about the different scenarios that might play out, and in last week’s podcast of HoboTrashcan , I mention the possibility of a retcon or reboot of the story. I saw the series going down one of two fairly well-defined paths: the bomb doesn’t quite work and the survivors are stuck on the island but put back into their own time, or the bomb does work and everyone gets a do-over. Luckily for us the Lost creative team decided to give us a hybrid of both and, despite some extremely lazy writing on a couple of occasions, I think we’re in for quite a good ride.
So, as Sayid so eloquently put it: “What happened?” It all starts with a cat, really.
THE X FACTOR
I’ll assume that just about everyone out there has heard of Schrödinger’s Cat by now, even if they don’t understand all the details involved. Allow me to explain, as best and simply as I can. In this classic thought experiment, a cat is placed in a box (a steel chamber, actually), along with a Geiger counter, a little bit of a radioactive substance and a counter tube hooked up to a small hammer, poised above a flask of poison (or acid, in Schrödinger’s original hypothesis). The device is protected against interference from the cat. If the radioactive substance experiences atomic decay, the Geiger counter would detect it, releasing the hammer, which smashes the poison container, thereby killing the cat. The radioactive substance is so small, though, that there may be decay within an hour, or there may be no decay whatsoever. Hence, as long as the cat is in the box and there is no outside indication of the fate of the cat, we don’t know whether the cat is dead or alive. It theoretically exists in two quantum states – both dead AND alive. And there you have the Schrödinger’s Cat paradox.
In the example above, it doesn’t matter if you actually care whether the subject is dead or alive, it’s just important to contemplate the possibilities of both.
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Episode 6.01, Episode 6.02,
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